The Guy Has Some Stones

I seriously hope that nobody is trying to rehabilitate Roger Stone as he attempts to repent over what he helped impose on the world. The guy was actively pushing the 'Whitey' tape as recently as this year's Republican convention, for crying out loud.

The capstone of Stone’s career, at least in terms of results, was the “Brooks Brothers riot” of the 2000 election recount. This was when a Stone-led squad of pro-Bush protestors stormed the Miami-Dade County election board, stopping the recount and advancing then-Governor George W. Bush one step closer to the White House. Though he is quick to rebut GOP operatives who seek to minimize his role in the recount, Stone lately has been having second thoughts about what happened in Florida.

"There have been many times I've regretted it,” Stone told me over pizza at Grand Central Station. “When I look at those double-page New York Times spreads of all the individual pictures of people who have been killed [in Iraq], I got to think, 'Maybe there wouldn't have been a war if I hadn't gone to Miami-Dade. Maybe there hadn't have been, in my view, an unjustified war if Bush hadn't become president.' It's very disturbing to me."

He doesn't regret crap. He's looking to disappear Bush like the rest of the GOP. Stone saw the opportunity to increase his power as a prize GOP ratfucker and fixer and he took it. Now their golden boy, the man the party establishment plucked from the Governor's mansion in Austin and lined up behind en masse for years, revealed himself to be an incompetent dullard with a knack for ruining everything he gets his hands on. And we're supposed to let that stain, the blot on the records of all these willing dupes who backed him, to be washed out? Hell no.

Stone voted for Bush in 2004 as well (“John Kerry was an elitist buffoon”) but he pulled no punches in his assessment of the last eight years. Stone's own political philosophy is libertarian, and he says it conflicts with Bush's penchant for expanded executive power.

“I think across the board he's led the party to its current position, which means losing both houses of congress and now the White House,” Stone said. “How can you be conservative and justify wiretapping people without a warrant? We're supposed to be the party of personal freedom and civil liberties. Big brother listening in on your phone calls—I got a problem with that.”

Give me a break. Not one Republican member of the House or Senate raised an objection to the illegal wiretapping program ever. Not one time. And neither did scummy operatives like Stone. Hell, Stone bragged about doing his own surveillance during the Brooks Brothers riot:

“We set up a Winnebago trailer, right over here,” Stone said when we got out of the Jaguar and walked about a block away from the Clark center, on First Street. “I set up my command center there. I had walkie-talkies and cell phones, and I was in touch with our people in the building. Our whole idea was to shut the recount down. That was why we were there. We had the frequency to the Democrats’ walkie-talkies and were listening to their communications, but they were so disorganized that we didn’t learn much that was useful.”

Oh, by the way, Stone was apparently a reluctant warrior in the recount fight. He was just paying off debts:

That Stone joins Matthew Dowd, Scott McClellan, and Colin Powell in the group of disaffected ex-Bushies shouldn’t come as a complete surprise. Stone advised Donald Trump on his prospective bid for the presidency in 2000. According to Stone, he didn't even want to get involved in the 2000 race at all until the GOP's recount head, James Baker III, called him up and asked him for his help. Stone said that Baker had helped him out in 1981 by getting Reagan and Bush to lend support to New Jersey Governor Tom Kean, whose campaign Stone ran. He owed him a favor.

“In this business, if you don't pay your debts you're finished,” Stone said.

This is horseshit. And really dangerous horseshit besides. These people are running away as fast as they can from a legacy they helped create, and there is absolutely no reason to allow them to do so. Those dead American soldiers and Iraq children are YOUR children, Mr. Stone. You helped cause them, you helped send them to their deaths, and there is no way anyone should allow you to airbrush your own conscience. And in 5 or 10 or 15 years when you and the whole dirty cabal is back with some other empty suit, the REAL vessel of conservatism, we're all going to remember who you backed the last time. George W. Bush is yours. You bought him and you own him. And you can't take him to the return window.

...here's Karl Rove terribly concerned about illegal political activities inside the Obama White House, extreme use of executive power, replacing US Attorneys like Patrick Fitzgerald (!) and overly political Administration appointments.

Karl Rove is concerned about that.

The Myth Of A Maverick

Matt Stoller has scored an incredible interview with a staffer from John McCain's 2000 Presidential campaign. It might not surprise you, given the sludge that his campaign is currently running, that the style is virtually unchanged from those days, when he was this supposed straight-talking honorable maverick. John McCain hasn't changed a bit.

McCain 2000 staffer: Yes, in South Carolina he had the Quinn's running his campaign out of their office. McCain did very well with establishment Republicans in NH... they helped him get his big win there along with independents. The Quinn's (Rick and Richard) are notorious.

Matt Stoller: For what?

McCain 2000 staffer: Well, they are probably one of the few consultants in SC that everyone would want. But... They also publish the Southern Partisan magazine. Which is extremely racist.

McCain 2000 staffer: McCain had their support and they were our consultants there. A good get for a Republican in the primary.

Matt Stoller: Wow

McCain 2000 staffer: He also had the support of some state officials and legislators that were important. Not to mention Graham and Sanford who at the time were both US Reps. Now one is a Senator and the other is Governor

Matt Stoller: The general consensus among pundits is that McCain in 2000 was destroyed by George Bush's dirty tricks (masterminded by Karl Rove). These tricks included claims he fathered a black child and attacks on his record in Vietnam.

McCain 2000 staffer: Had the Quinn's won SC for McCain he would have been the nominee in 2000.

Matt Stoller: But that McCain himself ran an honorable campaign.

McCain 2000 staffer: Ha! Again, the story is more detailed than that. Rove ran a Rove campaign. So yes, they were dirty. But we were too. I remember the week after NH, we surged in SC polls from something like 10pts behind Bush to 10pts ahead. After a little slipping because Bush was letting surrogates go after McCain's military history, we went up with an ad that said Bush twisted the truth just like Clinton. The ad aired for one day. The press said McCain was going negative, the Bush people screamed bloody murder, and our campaign went into a tail spin. Had that ad not run, I'm convinced, and if you spoke to people from the SC campaign or Weaver or Davis and they were honest with you they would agree, that ad sank the campaign.

Matt Stoller: What were some of the rumors the campaign was pushing about Bush?

McCain 2000 staffer: I remember talking with reporters after events about Bush's DUI. I remember senior press staff doing that. I remember them talking about Laura Bush's horrible car accident, saying that she may have been drunk when it happened. On a funny side note, during a debate Bush held up this flyer we were handing out door to door and at events that said Bush would hurt seniors... it was a really nasty flyer aimed at scaring the elderly. So Bush holds it up and asks McCain about it. McCain looks at Bush and says it isn't from his campaign. Bush points out that it says McCain's campaign paid for it. McCain then says well we have stopped doing that. Keep in mind, McCain swore off negative TV ads after the Clinton one failed so badly. So I'm watching the debate and I'm like... is he crazy? We have people in the field handing that out TONIGHT. He blew up at the staff that night over the flyer. Vintage McCain. He doesn't mind getting deep in the mud when it works for him. But if he gets caught? Hell-to-pay. And then he plays the straight-talking martyr.

Matt Stoller: Was he responsible for the flyer, or was it some sort of rogue operation within the campaign? What kind of tone did he and his senior advisors set?

McCain 2000 staffer: Ultimately McCain signed off on everything. That's how he operated. Very military minded, chain of command so to speak. The tone? Well, I think a story illustrates that better. On the campaign we had this right of passage called being WOW'd. It stood for Wrath of Weaver. If you ever experienced his wrath you essentially made it to the in-team. McCain on the other hand, being on the receiving end of his temper was NEVER a good thing. It wasn't something you bragged about over drinks with co-workers like you did with Weaver. It could be brutal. It's sort of funny in retrospect. At the end of ads these days, candidates have to say 'I'm so and so, and I approve this message." McCain is the guy who made that law. To see the filth he's been approving is pretty sick, but not unexpected.

This would be a nice story to fax to David Broder and Chris Matthews and Joe Klein, these pundits who did somersaults any time McCain was in their general orbit for years, and who think that this dive into the muck is only of recent vintage. McCain has been saying and doing anything to get elected for a long, long time. The gasbags became so impressed by this military man and his presumed honor that they made up a story about him, created an image basically out of nothing, an image that until this year made him the most respected Republican politician in America. Now a few of them are seeing the error of their ways, but they're replacing it with another story - John McCain's changed. He had to go to the dark side in this election. He didn't even want to, it's those Rove protégés around him that are pushing this noble warrior into it.

Wrong. All wrong. McCain lives for knifing his political enemies. He just wants deniability for it, which so many in the media are willing to give him thanks to this carefully cultivated image. The great axiom of modern politics is that if someone on television is telling you how honorable a politician is, well, just turn the sound off, because it's nothing but inauthentic flattery. Cocktail parties don't have this much gladhanding at them.

Recounts And Recent History

As you may know, I'm actually spending the weekend out in New York City for a wedding and am largely off the grid, but I did want to mention one thing before HBO unveiled its cinematic account of the Bush-Gore Florida follies Recount tonight, which is getting excellent reviews.

In my day job, I'm a freelancer in the LA area, and this past week I spent some time in a new office that I hadn't been to in some time. Immediately, I noticed something new gracing the wall; the front page of the Los Angeles Times from the day after the Supreme Court decision in Bush v. Gore and Gore's concession from the race. I don't know how it got there or who put it up, but I'm glad they did, for as an artifact of the state of the world from the eye of the media at the close of the election, it's pretty fascinating.

The subhead from the top headline reads "President-Elect Calls For Reconciliation After Gore Concedes Defeat in Longest Contest in a Century." There was an analysis from Times Washington Bureau Chief Doyle McManus titled "Bush's Vow To Unite Encounters a Great Divide," and the beginning of the story (only the front page was on the wall) talked about how Bush campaigned as a "uniter, not a divider," and how this would now be tested by those angry Democrats, who Bush planned to reconcile with in order to calm the waters. Here's a sample:

Bush sought to send a message of soothing bipartisan conciliation in his first statement as President-elect.

"I am optimistic we can change the tone in Washington, D.C.," Bush said. "I believe things happen for a reason, and I hope the long wait of the last five weeks will heighten a desire to move beyond the bitterness and partisanship of the recent past."

Bush actually invoked Lincoln in that speech, saying that "Our nation must rise above a house divided," and how he was elected to serve one nation and not one party.

There was an analysis by Josh Getlin about how the nation was ripped asunder by this recount battle and scars were still showing and how wonderful it was that the "national shouting match was ending."

And there was an vaguely sourced story about how Gore's lawyers wanted to keep fighting after the Supreme Court decision (they apparently found some glimmers of hope in the opinion), but Gore finally called it to an end after exploring all avenues.

So the prevailing opinion on one of the country's more respected newspapers on this day was, basically, that George Bush was this conciliatory figure, Al Gore was scheming right up until the very last second and even after to overturn the election, and the public was just glad it was all over and now America can get on with the business of healing and bipartisanship.

Let that marinate in your mind, and bathe it in the knowledge of what actually took place over the past eight years.

Of course, this is the rhetorical angle that Bush used outwardly during the recount battle, that the counting was over with and now is the time to "bind up the nation's wounds" and move forward. What's a little shocking is how quickly and directly the major media figures came to the same conclusion. The seeds of how the media treated the Bush Administration over the bulk of his first term are all here, particularly the amplification of the main message coming from Ari Fleischer on any given day. And this was all done for our benefit, in the spirit of ending bitterness and changing tone and overcoming the rancorous partisanship. A time for healing.

Except we all know where that partisanship flowed from. And how it continued from the moment Bush II entered office. I don't know if this is explored in "Recount," but it should be in the background of any story which recreates that time period.

Hit Me With A Stick

Apparently, the President said this today at his year-end press conference:

Commenting on Lebanese elections, Bush said, “Majority plus one ought to determine who the president is.”

Except if it's 2000, and you lose by a half a million votes.

Or maybe it was a plaintive cry for help. "I shouldn't even have this job! It's too damn tough! Al Gore, save me!"

An Unreasonable Man

I will second Robert Kuttner's excellent article about the new Ralph Nader documentary, An Unreasonable Man, which I saw Saturday night. It's a great film that does not paint a hagiographic portrait of the 3-time candidate for President. That's why it's to Nader's credit that he presented the film at my screening.

(Side note: he was eating in the same Mediterrenean restuarant as me before the film. I knew that he was a terrorist sympathizer! And he's Lebanese-American! Deport him! Hezbollah!)

He said that he "takes his lumps" in the film, but that it was important to hear all sides of the story and present a full portrait. This stands in contrast to the megalomaniac that many Democrats consider Nader in the aftermath of his "stealing" the 2000 election.

I have a conflicted relationship with Ralph Nader. I voted for him in 2000, volunteered, did lit drops, had many arguments with friends and at information tables. At the time I wanted to see the Greens get 5% of the vote to qualify for ballot access and federal matching funds. I then as now believe that third parties are generally good for democracy, though their import would be much improved by innovations like Instant Runoff Voting. I was in a safe blue state and was involved in the "vote-trading" efforts that popped up spontaneously to deal with Nader's impact on the swing states. Gore won the election anyway, and Nader's blame for the result has been exaggerated by those who needed a scapegoat.

The problem is that his performance in 2000 (and 2004, which is far less defensible) nearly wiped out a lifetime's work:

For people younger than I, it's too easy to forget who Ralph Nader was -- and still is. As a lawyer not yet 30 years old, Nader began writing about a subject that literally did not exist as a public issue until he invented it -- cars that were dangerous by design. Detroit had popularized a one-liner that the leading cause of accidents was "the nut behind the wheel." By definition, death and disfiguring injury had be to the driver's fault, not the automakers'.

When Nader exposed the systematic dangers in Detroit's cars, first in magazine articles, then in his 1965 book, Unsafe at Any Speed, General Motors Inc. put detectives on his tail, tried to set him up with women, investigated whether he might be gay or smoked pot, pretended to be conducting job reference interviews.

An incensed Senator Abe Ribicoff called GM President James Roche to testify. Roche defended GM's "legal right to ascertain the facts." Ribicoff shot back that Nader's sex life had nothing to do with his criticisms of GM's cars. Roche huddled with his lawyers, apologized to the committee and to Nader, and later settled an invasion of privacy lawsuit. The proceeds, deliciously, went to underwrite the Center for Responsive Law, soon made famous as Nader's Raiders.

The David vs. Goliath saga, deftly shown in the film, put Nader and auto safety on the map. Just two months after the Ribicoff hearings, Lyndon Johnson signed the nation's first auto safety bill.

In the aftermath of Nader's abortive presidential runs, it's easy to forget all that he accomplished. It's also easy to forget that Nader was a relative conservative in an era of radicals. He and his raiders were the clean-scrubbed idealists determined to make the system work. Seat belts alone, according to government statistics, saved 195,382 lives over 30 years.

One by one, dozens of landmark pieces of consumer legislation resulted from Nader's efforts. An Unreasonable Man preserves that remarkable record, in entertaining and witty fashion.

This is the finest part of the film, showing Nader's impact on a host of consumer-protection legislation throughout the 1960s and 1970s. He was one of the country's most trusted men and most unassailable critics of government.

And he squandered that reputation in a 10-year permanent campaign which still continues. The film and Kuttner make the point that big business had gelded Nader's Raiders by the late 1970s by countering his public pressure for change. But I can't help thinking that all of the fine work by Public Citizen and good-government groups have been left to rot while Nader tilted at windmills. His frustration with corporate influence in both parties led him to this decision; but Nader's great successes came when he was OUTSIDE the tent; I don't understand why he felt such a need to be inside it. Who is speaking today for the American consumer? Where is the organization that can channel grassroots energy in a positive and goal-oriented direction. It's almost like Nader abandoned one cause to take up another that even he knew was unrealizable.

Everybody in the film gets an opportunity to discuss the 2000 election; some favorably, others unfavorably. My favorite moment in the film is when Eric Alterman, who pounds on Nader in soundbite after soundbite, says "I think he's a Leninist, he believes things have to get worse before they get better." And you know what, that's kind of worked out as this presumption predicts:

On the other hand, one of the memes floating about in the Nadersphere has, I think, been vindicated: Namely the basically Leninist idea that a Democratic loss and a period of Republican governance would pull the Democrats in a more progressive direction in terms of, for example, questioning "Washington Consensus" globalization. At the time, that argument didn't make sense to me. And in some important ways I still don't think it makes a ton of sense logically. But it does seem to be what's happened. Now, was that a price worth paying for the dead in Iraq, the torture, etc.? I don't really think so.

I agree that it's too high a price to bear. But it's clear that we have a Democratic Party that has rejected Third-Way DLCism in favor of a politics of contrast (seems to me, though, that this came about more from the 2002 election and its aftermath than 2000). And it's clear that the core issues that Nader spoke about in 2000 - issues like global warming, universal health care, alternative energy, labor law changes - are the EXACT issues put forward by most of the 2008 field of Democrats. it's not clear that Nader cost anybody anything in 2000, nor did he apply sufficient pressure to effect this change. He does make the good point in the film that he wasn't let in the debates because he "wasn't a factor," only to be chastised by Democrats for being the deciding factor.

It's a complex situation which makes for great drama and discussion, which is why I highly recommend the film. It remains to be seen whether Nader will run in 2008: more than a few in the audience of my screening appeared to want to see that happen. I would rather see him return to his roots and work with this more-progressive Democratic Congress to protect and defend the American consumer. And maybe, just maybe, we can reverse the outcome of the 2000 election by making Al Gore President.